http://robinschwartz.net/
This is a website that you've just got to see. I'm still processing what I've seen in my head. Robin has got a collection of photos on her website where her daughter, Amelia, and various animals just seem to be the same species. Amelia has got an expressionless face, an almost sort of ethereal look in her eyes, and a careless attitude with all the spider monkeys and elephants and baby tigers, who are just drawn to her! Robin says that her goal is to set up this sort of fantasy world, where the focus is not only on the presence of Amelia, but in the whole scene itself, which I find to be very well portrayed, even if the images are shot in a very straightforward no-bullshit organization. I was thinking about what it would be like to live as the daughter of a photographer, where your mother uses you as a subject for photographs. I'm sure the daughter is willing, and that their relationship is full of love and life, but I still think about that catalytic barrier that a camera can often be between two people, both in the moment of the shot and afterwards. Robin says that her daughter is not afraid of the animals, but rather it is the humans, much more destructive creatures, that she should be wary of. There is some truth in that statement.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9pAKdkJh-Y&feature=player_embedded
I was so amused by this article. Being from Cincinnati, the most Catholic conservative town in the nation, raised up in Catholic grade schools and an all-boys Catholic high school (not as bad as it seems, imagine when you separate maturing boys and girls and then give them an opportunity to get together...), I'm trying to imagine a nun from my sister's school speaking about art in such a sophisticated manner. We often think of those devoting their lives to the church as lame, plain people without any other interest in the world than redemption! savior! my Lord!, but have been certainly proven wrong in this case. The nun is asked about the work of the Piss Christ by Andres Serrano, a work I was not familiar with, but how pieces like this and other such works that are 'vulgar' in construction of composition should be seen by those of faith. She makes two comments that were profound. First, just because some abuse does not mean that we should limit use. The second is the quote below the clip on LPV Magazine's blog.
“I think comforting art is art that is very easy to react to. I might be tempted to say that Serrano’s ‘Piss Christ’ is comforting art, in that everyone knows exactly what they think about it. They’re not challenged in the slightest. Ninety percent of them think its blasphemous and a few like me think, well, it might not be. It might be a rather ham-fisted attempt to preach about the need to reverence the crucifix. Not a very gifted young man, but he’s trying his best. But that’s comforting art, you see, because it’s so easy to have an opinion and a reaction. Everyone thinks they can do it.”
It is the art that is not easy to have an opinion about, and that isn't just the "flavor of the week or flavor of the month" as she puts it, that is really the most profound. It is work that is timeless, than can be seen by a person anywhere in the world at any time and place and react to it, while these individuals' interpretations are not easily foreseen.
Monday, March 19, 2012
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Photography and Commodity Culture
Seeing the title, I didn't think I was going to be very intrigued by this chapter, but as it turn out, there were actually many more questions that I raised in this than any other section. Shall we begin?
-One Question I have about fashion photography and its use for advertising is whether or not the production of images, which are in part perpetuated by the advertisements, come from the demands consumers have, or if it is instead the mere power and prestige that these advertisers have by name that can produce the desire. What I mean by the later part is the question of whether or not what is produced can be entirely arbitrary and random, without any base, and only by the 'name-brand' are able to become popularized, or whether it comes from the consumers desires for a specific style that they themselves are unable to fabricate? This is related to photography because it asks then whether or not the images produced for fashion photography are designed from an emptiness, with roots that begin nowhere, or whether they are actually feeding off of and getting their juice from the rest of society.
-"The vast majority of fashion students never visit a factor throughout their degree" (240) What does this day about the production process? Both the production of the consumer items, and the production of images?
-"Tourists, having already consumed an array of exotic and glammored photographs of the place before arrival, search out these very images and sites to visit and photograph in order to feel that their trip is complete... conform to an image which has already been constructed." (242-243)
- H.S. Wong placed a baby next to a bombed out railroad in Shanghai to highlight devastation and desolation.
It is appropriate to call this documentary? even journalism?
It is the photograph's 'accurate' content which makes it a documentary/journalistic photo, or can an emotion that is portrayed through construction, but is not present 'as is', be also considered a document of such?
- Freimut Dave commented on the portrayal of the US's most recent invasion in Iraq, saying that "a high percentage of people are watching without realizing this is a war" (210)
Could this be a result of having so many photographs and images shown to us on a daily basis, that we become detached from such images and video which really are of people suffering and dying?
Or could it be that we have to experience to relate?
-Machin states that this type of commercial photography is "photography in which there is connotation" (214) lacking denotative qualities, but might this be more of a cultural problem, as we look at like as a more generalized collective rather than focusing on the individual as it is then and there?
Monday, March 12, 2012
Vojtech Slama & Malo
http://www.lenscratch.com/2012/03/vojtech-v-slama.html
This article on Lenscratch is the promotion of an exhibition opening in Brooklyn at a place called Klompching Gallery (awesome name), where the artists Ken Rosenthal and Vojtech Slama will be featured. As Rosenthal had been recently featured in an earlier article, so Slama's photos were the only only digitals posted. His work is done on silver bromide, so I'm sure that those on the blog do no justice to living up to how they appear in real life, but regardless I find them captivatingly eerie. He has such an interesting way of organizing form, and the way that it complements with the colors that the silver bromide produces makes them even more mysterious. The first and fourth photos, with the woman lying in the bathtub reading a book, and the other woman holding onto the pumpkin, are great examples of this. I wasn't even aware that they were actual photographs, but seem more to be abstract constructions of the body.
http://www.lenscratch.com/2012/03/malo.html
This next article I just found to be extremely humorous and whimsical, but also makes an important statement about childhood, development, and growth. The children are all positioned in the same direction, and may as well be the same child in each photo, but the costumes and positioning of the children is what is most important. We all are born as pure, innocent beings in this world, with no concept of a job or the working life or achievements or "being" someone. Yet over time, we loose that connection that unifies us all as one being, and eventually grow up to be separate people living separate lives that take us all around the world and present us opportunities to expand and decay. Take for example the contrast between the photo of the pope child and the soldier child. The pope looks so at peace and harmony with himself, like a little ball of light in his shining red and white garbs, while the soldier in contrast appears almost dead, rifle at his site, but still just as contempt with his position. Maybe this is how we should look at life, like a child who accepts what he is and where he is at in the moment, rather than the clothing that distinguished us as different people with higher and lower ranks on the social ladder.
This article on Lenscratch is the promotion of an exhibition opening in Brooklyn at a place called Klompching Gallery (awesome name), where the artists Ken Rosenthal and Vojtech Slama will be featured. As Rosenthal had been recently featured in an earlier article, so Slama's photos were the only only digitals posted. His work is done on silver bromide, so I'm sure that those on the blog do no justice to living up to how they appear in real life, but regardless I find them captivatingly eerie. He has such an interesting way of organizing form, and the way that it complements with the colors that the silver bromide produces makes them even more mysterious. The first and fourth photos, with the woman lying in the bathtub reading a book, and the other woman holding onto the pumpkin, are great examples of this. I wasn't even aware that they were actual photographs, but seem more to be abstract constructions of the body.
http://www.lenscratch.com/2012/03/malo.html
This next article I just found to be extremely humorous and whimsical, but also makes an important statement about childhood, development, and growth. The children are all positioned in the same direction, and may as well be the same child in each photo, but the costumes and positioning of the children is what is most important. We all are born as pure, innocent beings in this world, with no concept of a job or the working life or achievements or "being" someone. Yet over time, we loose that connection that unifies us all as one being, and eventually grow up to be separate people living separate lives that take us all around the world and present us opportunities to expand and decay. Take for example the contrast between the photo of the pope child and the soldier child. The pope looks so at peace and harmony with himself, like a little ball of light in his shining red and white garbs, while the soldier in contrast appears almost dead, rifle at his site, but still just as contempt with his position. Maybe this is how we should look at life, like a child who accepts what he is and where he is at in the moment, rather than the clothing that distinguished us as different people with higher and lower ranks on the social ladder.
Monday, February 27, 2012
This guys Wild Idea
http://www.lenscratch.com/2012/02/theron-humphrey-and-this-wild-idea.html
This is one of the coolest articles that I've seen so far. Theron Humphrey, who is used to doing more commercialized photography, decided to get up and go based off This Wild Idea. He determined that he was going to going on a year long, 365 day trip to meet someone new every day and photograph this experience (isn't it leap year though? haha). Any how, putting all photography aside for now, I feel like Theron has found the jem to life, making new relationships with people he's never met in places that he's never been, traveling around like a lost little puppy who just wants to be friends with everyone. You can certainly see in his photography that he does have that more commercial background, taking very clear shots of people, their environments, and the both of them together. This makes me curious as to how things might change for him as he continues along the road, moving place to place, idea to idea. I hope they continue to make posts about his further adventures and document where he ends up at, with that final friend.
His website is at http://thiswildidea.com/
He's 210 peoples in so far, with... 155 people to go.
Roll on Theron.
This is one of the coolest articles that I've seen so far. Theron Humphrey, who is used to doing more commercialized photography, decided to get up and go based off This Wild Idea. He determined that he was going to going on a year long, 365 day trip to meet someone new every day and photograph this experience (isn't it leap year though? haha). Any how, putting all photography aside for now, I feel like Theron has found the jem to life, making new relationships with people he's never met in places that he's never been, traveling around like a lost little puppy who just wants to be friends with everyone. You can certainly see in his photography that he does have that more commercial background, taking very clear shots of people, their environments, and the both of them together. This makes me curious as to how things might change for him as he continues along the road, moving place to place, idea to idea. I hope they continue to make posts about his further adventures and document where he ends up at, with that final friend.
His website is at http://thiswildidea.com/
He's 210 peoples in so far, with... 155 people to go.
Roll on Theron.
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Chapter 4: Photography and the Human Body
This reading in Well's was definitely one of the most challenging chapters for me, theoretically, because of the loose debates about the the exposition of the human body. I don't think I can come up with any sort of clear opinion on what I feel should be limited in terms of content and nudity, but it is certainly one of the easiest ways to stir up some emotions, religiously, politically, sexually, in gendered terms, and aesthetically. Also, I had never considered the roles that photographing the dead can play in society, and I was actually surprised when I saw the sub genre that it didn't go into more detail, possibly focusing on the roles of documentary and death.
What I found to be the most interesting however is the section titles "Technological Bodies" and the discussion based around the camera throughout the ages and its affects on the humans in terms of our physicality. "The camera and other technologies for seeing also affect the way we value our own sense of sight." (2009 Wells: 194) By making something capable of enhancing that which we see, we are actually devaluing the individual and their ability to see. Not only can we capture moments in clarity grame by frame, but we can show what and who were there, or so we think we do. The interventions that photography and related developments have had on science again give superiority to these machines, which are much more accurate than a human could ever be. But always much colder.
A couple of questions that I have:
If the technological advancements of photography are able to give "clearer vision" as to what is there and that which we can't see, what sort of consequences does this have in various fields? Medicinal? Judicial? Artistic? In Literature? In Storytelling?
Also,
Why is it that we choose to place some much emphasis on nudity in the United States, whereas other countries, even those in the Western world, tend to appreciate and accept it more readily? It is something more universal than almost anything else to humans, so is it the need we have to compare with others? To strive for perfection? Does it make one lustful or allow us to eject the sense desires that many of us hold inside?
What I found to be the most interesting however is the section titles "Technological Bodies" and the discussion based around the camera throughout the ages and its affects on the humans in terms of our physicality. "The camera and other technologies for seeing also affect the way we value our own sense of sight." (2009 Wells: 194) By making something capable of enhancing that which we see, we are actually devaluing the individual and their ability to see. Not only can we capture moments in clarity grame by frame, but we can show what and who were there, or so we think we do. The interventions that photography and related developments have had on science again give superiority to these machines, which are much more accurate than a human could ever be. But always much colder.
A couple of questions that I have:
If the technological advancements of photography are able to give "clearer vision" as to what is there and that which we can't see, what sort of consequences does this have in various fields? Medicinal? Judicial? Artistic? In Literature? In Storytelling?
Also,
Why is it that we choose to place some much emphasis on nudity in the United States, whereas other countries, even those in the Western world, tend to appreciate and accept it more readily? It is something more universal than almost anything else to humans, so is it the need we have to compare with others? To strive for perfection? Does it make one lustful or allow us to eject the sense desires that many of us hold inside?
Monday, February 20, 2012
Project Proposal
The last post that I made with the handful of photos are for a photo project where I am focusing in on the ideas of construction and destruction. And so, here is what I mean...
Originally, my concept of these two ideas was based mostly on a cynical view of how much waste we make with space and material by feeling the need to constantly build and rebuild and perfect and comfortize, but now, I think I want to move away from that and have a slightly less opinionated perspective. Not everything that we create or destroy is for the bad, and not all is for the good. What does that leave us?
I am a big big fan of the Tao Te Ching, and there are a couple quotes which I would like to use as the basis of my study.
The first:
"We hammer wood for a house,
but it is the inner space
that makes it livable."
The second:
"The world is formed from the void,
like utensils from a block of wood.
The master knows the utensils,
yet keeps to the block."
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